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If you got one of them new fancy usb drives with proper speeds (f.e Kingston Datatraveler Max) then maybe try installing your favourite distro on it and boot from that?
I second this, using a live environment to try it out is the way to go, windows still has a multitude of issues with dual booting that make it impossible to recommend. As an aside, OP what are the programs that you are wary about, buy in large everything works on Linux, you just either need to use the oss alternative or in some very specific cases your Sol
App-wise, I know my wife is going to want to use Microsoft Word and Excel, and we always use this laptop for our taxes, so TurboTax. I have a feeling running from a USB drive will be way too slow.
Has your wife tried out the libreoffice suite or the online version of office? If not I would highly recommend the former then the later if it doesn't work out for you, as running ms office on Linux is officially impossible and unofficially a pain in the ass.
If it must be turbotax, a VM or wine will be the move, if it doesn't need to be, there is opentaxsolver, although I have no experience with any of these software suites.
In general it should more than suffice, the only thing is load times will be high, but not unbereably so.
Thanks. I forget about the online version of MS. That might be our fallback plan if we get desperate.
Turbotax can be used from a web browser, you don't need to install a program. There's also FreeTaxUSA, and numerous other sites that do the same thing.
LibreOffice is very feature-complete compared to MS Office.
The Kingston Datatraveler Max will be more than fast enough
https://ssd-tester.com/kingston_datatraveler_max_usb-a_256gb.html
https://www.kingston.com/en/usb-flash-drives/datatraveler-max
If you're unwilling to change software suites thst is gonna be the bigger problem.
Being that this laptop is probably 15 years old, I'm doubt the USB slots are going to benefit much from those high speed drives. They are USB3 at least.
Software-suite wise, I suspect that won't be a problem long-term but I know we'll have to look closely at least a few of our more complex documents - such as resumes - to make sure they can be converted properly. My wife is a spreadsheet maniac too, though I expect most won't take special handling. Being able to boot back to Windows in a pinch will be beneficial though.
The annoying thing is that this is not possible without sacrificing system stability, there are about half a dozen known issues with windows update removing Linux bootloaders in a dual boot system, and it has personally bricked my system twice even with booting from a separate drive. I would highly recommend making your fallback a VM like qemu or a more well integrated one like winboat, it is just not worth the risk to dual boot.
That's definitely my fear. Tychosmoose's experience gives me hope but maybe that's just setting me up for disappointment. I guess I at least wanna make sure I keep my system backed up before updating Windows and maybe disabling auto updates.
I do not believe you can disable auto update anymore on windows.
Half the speed of USB 3.2 Gen2 is still plenty fast. :)
Core2Duo? Or 1st-gen i3/i5/i7? Either way, that will still run Linux just fine.
That's where a VM will shine.
With dual booting, you have to reboot the whole system into the other OS. With a VM, you can just run Windows inside that in the background, and open it right back up if needed.
I'll definitely have to try that. What VM software would you recommend? My experience with VMs is very limited and only on Windows, not Linux.
The CPU is an Intel 47xx... can't recall exact model. It's a decent machine with 12GB of memory so should handle a VM ok even.
i7-4770 or i7-4790? Those Haswell-based CPUs are legendary, even in 2025. I built an i7-4790K based gaming rig probably 10 years ago or so, it was an absolute monster.
For VMs on Linux, I would recommend something called "Virtual Machine Manager". It's in nearly every distro's software repository, and uses
qemu(common virtualization tool in Linux servers all over the world) for the backend. But whatever you do, stay away from "VirtualBox".It's an i7-4700MQ. Definitely still a decent CPU and with 12GB of ram more than adequate. Not sure I'll get touchscreen support with Linux, but I usually forget it's a touchscreen anyway.
Thanks for the VM tip. I used VirtualBox in the past but not heard anything good about it lately.
Depends what laptop it is, you might actually get native touchscreen support. Linux has come a long way, it supports quite a lot these days.
Yeah, unfortunately VirtualBox is owned by Oracle, and Oracle is an objectively horrible company.